Vox Corpis [Harmione]

Chapter 30

It was a rotten kind of day before Ron even rolled out of bed in the morning. By the time he got up and dressed Dean, Seamus, and Neville were already downstairs in the Great Hall, no doubt happily tucked into their breakfast. Harry, apparently, was having a lie in, as he was still sound asleep when Ron was set to head downstairs. Ron resented him immensely for it. He was tempted to throw something at his once best friend to end his comfy little doze, but Ron didn't fancy having to deal with him once Harry woke. Just as like it would lead to some really unpleasant row, and Ron didn't fancy insults for breakfast. So Ron silently scowled his heart out at Harry instead and left the boys' dorm… just as Hermione, dressed for the day, was bounding up the stairs.

"Oh! Morning, Ron," she greeted him in passing, absently, all too eager to hurry past him in her bloody rush to get up to Harry. She acted like there wasn't a damn thing wrong with her just barging right into the boys' dorm room. And she stepped past him with that mere off-hand hello, as though it wasn't colored a thousand shades of buggered. She wasn't even sorry or ashamed. He resented her for that. Maybe not as much as he resented Harry, but Hermione had earned her share of it, the way Ron figured.

They both should have bloody well told him. No, they shouldn't have done it in the first place, but at the leastthey should have had the decency to tell him. Not that it would have changed anything, Ron would still be spitting furious at the both of them for the whole mess, but it would have been the friend thing to do.

Some bloody good friends he turned out to have.

Ron shoved his way into the space on the Gryffindor table next to Seamus that was hardly wide enough for Colin Creevey to squeeze into, let alone Ron's larger frame. Ron had taken to spending his free time with Seamus and Dean, but oftentimes it hardly seemed they wanted him around. Assumed he belonged in another lot, most like, and Ron was mad at Harry and Hermione for that, too. He couldn't fit in properly with anyone else because of that stupid 'Hogwarts trio' label the three of them seemed to carry. Like Ron couldn't expect a place outside of Harry and Hermione's clemency.

'Well, they can just go screw themselves,' Ron thought lividly. When the double entendre of his own thoughts clicked he took it out on his bacon. Seamus noticed Ron then, once the redhead was flaying his bacon with a vengeance.

Ron seemed cursed to look up from his plate of shredded pig-meat at the very moment that Harry and Hermione came down to the Great Hall. Together.

The only spot open enough for the both of them to sit next to one another, because Merlin forbid they have to part for the duration of breakfast, was unfortunately close to where Ron had weaseled his way on to the bench. He had a floor seat to the whole repugnant Harry and Hermione show.

Ron hated how he couldn't turn off the masochistic side of him that made him notice every ugly detail. How Harry's hand strayed to Hermione's shoulder just there, how the moony-eyed sappy girls up and down Gryffindor table sighed like it was so ruddy romantic, how Harry leaned in toward her to reach for the eggs when he could and should have asked her to pass them, how Hermione smiled at him. Ron threw down his fork with a clatter and gulped down a good amount of pumpkin juice like it was last call. He had to make a supreme effort not to acknowledge the bewildered looks from the guilty parties in question when he brought down his cup. Last thing he wanted was to explain himself to Harry and Hermione. Beside him, Seamus was jinxing a link of sausage to take flight and beat a deserving Slytherin about the head. Ron feigned interest. It was someplace else for Ron to look but at Harry and Hermione, at least until they forgot about him again. Which took all of three seconds.

And to top off breakfast, the insult to a morning of injuries, Ginny had to butt in.

"Morning, gorgeous! Don't you look tussled. Long night?" she leveled that smile at Harry, the one Ron had seen Ginny use on the dragon-keepers in Romania. The one that made his skin crawl and his blood boil with brotherly ire. How dare his sister know she was a girl and doubly how dare she use it. And worst of all, directed at Harry. Ron would almost prefer Ginny fawn over Draco Malfoy. Almost.